NICE News Special Edition - Volume 2, Issue 4

	UPDATE FROM JIM PARK NICE TELECOMMUNICATORS OF THE YEAR REEDY CREEK EMERGENCY SERVICES SELECTING AN IP RECORDING SOLUTION BEIJING METRO PICTURE YOUR PSAP IN NICE NEWS NICE QUICK CUSTOMER SURVEY - VOIP SEE NICE...




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READY, SET, GO: SELECTING AN IP RECORDING SOLUTION FOR YOUR PSAP

Although VoIP phone service has not yet eclipsed traditional telephone service, it continues to grow at a dizzying pace - and VoIP 9-1-1 calls are on the rise too. The question of how to handle an impending onslaught of VoIP 9-1-1 calls has become a springboard for a larger debate about IP's future role in public safety.

PSAPs are taking small steps in their deployment of IP telephony, mostly reserving its use for select administrative lines or the back office. Still, it is clear that IP holds great promise for PSAPs and will have a role to play in the future public safety landscape. It's through the use of IP-based networks that transmit both voice and data that PSAPs will eventually be able to consolidate their heretofore divergent networks for telephony, radio and CAD, and achieve lower costs and improved interoperability.

Exactly when IP will make a full-fledged arrival in 9-1-1 centers is anybody's guess - but one thing is certain: as you implement IP telephony in your comm center, you'll need to invest in recording technology that is capable of capturing these IP interactions. As you consider different options, don't underestimate the complexity of IP recording.

The complexities of IP recording...
IP recording implementations can be complicated, with many pitfalls that an inexperienced provider might not fully appreciate or understand.

In a traditional circuit switched telephony environment, there are hard-wired connections between the phone switch and every position in the PSAP. The recording system taps into these physical connections to capture the calls.

Recording in the IP environment is not as straight forward. The IP network is a packet-switched network so there's no physical, hard-wire connection from the switch to each position, other than network wiring. Instead, the IP phone communications travel in packets over a shared line on an IP network. To capture these calls, the recording system needs to be able to interface with the IP switch to first identify the packets on the network that pertain to audio calls, and then assemble the audio from the packets in a logical fashion, and record them. A specialized IP recording solution is needed to interface with the IP switch and meet the processor-intensive requirements of capturing IP interactions.

Also, recording in an IP domain is fundamentally different from recording in a traditional telephony environment. The recording system is no longer just an end point in a telephony system, but rather, a true network appliance, an active "participant" on the network. This requires a detailed understanding of the PSAP's IP network - its topology, rules and standards. The design of the IP recording solution needs to accommodate the PSAP's unique needs as well as the specific capabilities, capacity, and encryption requirements of the PSAP's IP network. A less than thorough analysis up front could result in lost recordings, and could even negatively impact other systems on the IP network.

Another issue that can make implementation of IP recording solutions complicated is the fact that VoIP solutions offered by different IP telephony vendors are actually proprietary in nature, even though they're layered on top of standard building blocks - VoIP signaling protocols such as H.323, SIP, etc. In some cases, there may even be multiple IP telephony platforms in a single environment - all with different signaling protocols, compression algorithms, and encryption requirements - and all contributing to the complexity of designing an IP recording solution.

Considering IP recording for your comm center? Have a question on IP recording? Leverage the expertise of NICE Systems. Email Welcome@NICE.com.